1 Robots eating into factory jobs (Gulf News) Despite
the Republican presidential nominee's charge that "we don't make anything
anymore," manufacturing is still flourishing in America. Problem is,
factories don't need as many people as they used to because machines now do so
much of the work. America has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since
manufacturing employment peaked in 1979.
Yet American factory production, minus raw materials
and some other costs, more than doubled over the same span to $1.91 trillion
last year, according to the Commerce Department, which uses 2009 dollars to
adjust for inflation. That's a notch below the record set on the eve of the
Great Recession in 2007. And it makes US manufacturers No. 2 in the world
behind China.
Trump and other critics are right that trade has
claimed some American factory jobs, especially after China joined the World
Trade Organization in 2001 and gained easier access to the US market. And
industries that have relied heavily on labour — like textile and furniture
manufacturing — have lost jobs and production to low-wage foreign competition.
But research shows that the automation of US
factories is a much bigger factor than foreign trade in the loss of factory
jobs. A study at Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic
Research last year found that trade accounted for just 13 percent of America's
lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs — 88 percent — were taken
by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human
labor.
General Motors, for instance, now employs barely a
third of the 600,000 workers it had in the 1970s. Yet it churns out more cars
and trucks than ever. Or look at production of steel and other primary metals.
Since 1997, the US has lost 265,000 jobs in the production of primary metals —
a 42 percent plunge — at a time when such production in the US has surged 38
percent.
The Boston Consulting Group predicts that investment
in industrial robots will grow 10 percent a year in the 25-biggest export
nations through 2025, up from 2 or 3 percent growth in recent years. But the
rise of the machines offers an upside to some American workers: The increased
use of robots - combined with higher labor costs in China and other developing
countries - has reduced the incentive for companies to chase low-wage labor
around the world.
2 India sets rates in major tax reform (BBC) India
has set rates for its new Goods and Services Tax (GST) system, its biggest tax
reform since independence. The new rates will range between 5% and 28%
depending on the product, with 12% and 18% as the standard.
The long-awaited changes aim to streamline the
country's fragmented tax system and transform it into a single market. Currently,
everything sold in India is subject to a multitude of taxes varying from state
to state.
The changes mark a "significant
development", said Santosh Dalvi of KPMG in India. There has been no
announcement yet, though, of which products fall into which of the tax
categories. "While one can have some guesswork around the GST rate for
some of the products, the devil is in the detail when the final classification
list will be released which is the most challenging task for the policy
makers," said Mr Dalvi.
A central plank of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's
economic agenda, the centralised tax is intended to cut through the red tape
and corruption generated by the swathe of state taxes currently in force. Currently,
goods brought for example from the northern city of Haryana to Chennai are
taxed in six different states.
Optimistic estimates suggest the changes could bring
more than 2% of added economic growth. India already has overtaken China as the
world's fastest growing economy.
3 International epidemic of exam cheating (The
Guardian) Students in Asian countries have been notified that their scores on
the writing section of last month’s ACT college entrance exam are being
cancelled, in the latest example of how standardised test makers are struggling
to contain an international epidemic of cheating.
The incident comes a few months after ACT Inc, the
Iowa-based nonprofit that operates the test, was forced to cancel its exam for
all takers in South Korea and Hong Kong. That incident, in June, marked the
first time the high-stakes exam was cancelled for an entire country. The ACT,
like the SAT test, is used by thousands of US colleges to help choose from
among millions of student applicants.
ACT’s chief rival, the New York-based College Board,
which administers the SAT, has been struggling with its own security problems.
The College Board recently notified an undisclosed number of test-takers in
Egypt that their scores were being cancelled for the October test.
College Board spokesman Zach Goldberg said the
cancellations were “based on evidence that a test preparation organisation
illegally obtained and shared the test content before the administration”.
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